Stockbridge Community Cinema Programme Notes 15 November 2019 The White Crow

Director: Ralph Fiennes Screenplay: David Hare (screenplay), Julie Kavanagh (Inspired by her book: "Rudolf Nureyev: The Life") Starring: Oleg Ivenko, Ralph Fiennes, Adèle Exarchopoulos, Louise Hoffman Year: 2018

This review first appeared in Rolling Stone magazine As a director, Ralph Fiennes shows the same alertness for telling details and rich characterization that he does as an actor. And that’s saying something. His talent shines in The White Crow, a look at the early life of Polunin, Ivenko’s fellow Ukrainian ballet star. It’s as if ballet great Rudolf Nureyev, up to and including his Nureyev’s appetite for experience can’t be closed in by defection from Russia and the Kirov Ballet at the Paris- conven Le Bourget airport in 1961. He was 23. The White Crow is not a biopic. It’s an impressionistic glimpse at The ballet sequences, performed by Ivenko, Polunin and the forces driving Nureyev - something of a diva even other dancers representing the Kirov company, are then - to accept no borders or limits in letting his beautifully executed. But Fiennes isn’t interested in artistry run fee. constructing his own version of The Red Shoes. What intrigues Fiennes as a filmmaker is the drive that keeps The White Crow (a Russian term for outlier) is Fiennes’ Nureyev going when forces build inexorably against him. third film as a director, following Coriolanus and The He wants us to know Nureyev as a man. Invisible Woman, in which he played, respectively, a soldier and an author (Charles Dickens), both thrust Fiennes intercuts scenes - shot in widescreen into the limelight. Nureyev is no exception. Fiennes, monochrome - of Nureyev’s childhood poverty, who discovered Julie Kavanagh’s 2007 Nureyev including his birth on a Trans-Siberian train, to reveal his biography over a decade ago, uses only the first five rigorous training by the state and his life as a have-not. chapters in his film about the dancer who played near You sense this young dancer is champing at the bit. Far every corner of the globe before dying of complications from avoiding the spotlight of fame, Nureyev revels in it, from AIDs in 1993. Working from a potent script by even as his outspoken personality wins him as many noted playwright and screenwriter David Hare (The enemies as it does friends. Hours, The Reader), Fiennes gives his period drama a present-tense urgency that draws us into the life of In a series of hugely entertaining moments, we watch Nureyev in the fascinating act of inventing himself. Nureyev discover the Paris club scene while evading his KGB handlers. He strikes up a deep and lasting Fiennes made the bold decision to cast a dancer in the friendship with Clara Saint (a silky cool Adèle role, figuring it would be impossible to teach an actor to Exarchopoulos), who’s still not over the death of her dance like a master. Good call. Ukranian dancer Oleg lover, the son of André Malraux, France’s minister of Ivenko, a soloist at the Jalil Tatar Ballet Theater, brings cultural affairs. Having friends in high places comes in just the right note of youthful energy and sexual swagger handy when Nureyev decides to seek asylum in France. to the role, speaking in Russian and accented English, his eyes alert to every challenge and perceived threat. Fiennes builds suspense and gut-clutching tension at the Ivenko has a natural screen presence, which Nureyev airport when Nureyev makes his decision to defect. never had as an actor - catch him at your peril in the Why did he do it? Fiennes offers no easy answers, title role of the great lover in 1977’s Valentino. Ivenko mostly because Nureyev didn’t have any himself. On manages to hold his own even in scenes with Fiennes. one side are the Russians, who order him home, The two-time Oscar nominee (Schindler’s List, The ostensibly to receive an award from Premier English Patient) , plays the famed dancer master Khrushchev, but more likely to hold him there as a Alexander Pushkin. Acting the role of St. Petersburg’s virtual prisoner. On the other side is his ambition to most respected ballet instructor, Fiennes - speaking only succeed on a world stage and charge into a scary in Russian - shows a reserve that nonetheless doesn’t unknown. Fiennes makes the weight of the choice miss a trick as Pushkin strives to keep politics out of art palpable. Part thriller, part meditation on life and art, and protect a protégé who recklessly carries on with part portrait of a man on a tightrope, The White Crow the master’s wife, Xenia (Chulpan Khamatova). Nureyev may be juggling more themes than it can handle. But is also shown having sex with men, including Yuri Fiennes makes the result a thing of bruising beauty and Soloview, played with charisma to spare by Sergei an exhilarating gift.